Genpact, MajescoMastek Partnership Combines BPO and Tech Solutions

Both parties plan to develop what they describe as innovative, platform-based business process management solutions across the industry value chain, including policy services, billing, claims, distribution management and new business/underwriting.

Genpact (Gurgaon, India) and MajescoMastek (New York) have embarked on a strategic partnership that combines their respective offerings in business process outsourcing (BPO) and technology solutions. The vendors tout their combined efforts as a novel model for addressing insurers' modernization efforts.

Genpact and MajescoMastek will offer joint IT and business process management solutions for large and mid-sized insurers. Both parties plan to develop what they describe as innovative, platform-based business process management solutions across the industry value chain, including policy services, billing, claims, distribution management and new business/underwriting.

Michael Dufton, president of MajescoMastek North America told Insurance & Technology that the partnership with Genpact is based on a belief that it meets an unfilled need in the insurance technology market place. "Technology providers historically have focused on the value of their technology and are dependent on a client as to how much process improvements will be made to derive full value from the technology solutions, and for BPO providers, client relationships are about improving processes with existing technology," he explains. "We think this is a unique offering, taking the best of both worlds."

Dennis Maroney, VP, global insurance business development, Genpact, says the partnership reflects Genpact's move to the next level toward its destiny as a company. "We've done the traditional BPO stuff and now we're looking to business outcomes," he comments. "We believe that through our combination of technology and BPO insurers will be able to say, 'I don't have to do choose between a technology- or BPO driven project' — they will be able to do end-to-end initiatives by combining both."

MajescoMastek's Dufton believes that the combined offerings of the partnership will result in credible competition to large insurance vertical vendors, such as CSC and Oracle. "I don't think that in the past CSC would have looked at us as formidable competitors, but we both believe that going to market together changes the dynamic and gives insurers a credible alternative to CSC and some of the other bigger players."

The main advantage of the combined offering is flexibility, according to Maroney. "Carriers can say, 'I can pick and choose; 'I can enhance distribution management, the billing processs, i can go after specific target areas and pain points and address those as opposed to looking to a monolithic option," he says.

Dufton says that MajescoMastek also contributes an expanded range of offerings through both internal development and mergers and acquisitions. "You should expect our enterprise extending our reach into more and more aspects of the value chain," he forecasts. "It's our belief that this partnership will initially be focused on solving pain points and will evolve into an end-to-end, closed-book approach, building on successes.

The combination of business process management with proven IT solutions offers a very compelling value proposition to insurers, in the view of Matthew Josefowicz, director of New York-based Novarica's insurance practice. However, Josefowicz sees the deal presently as resonating more in the BPO world than the realm of pure software. I'd say it's more related to the InfoSys McCamish deal," he comments. "It's important for BPO providers to have a strong asset or set of assets to go to market with, and asset companies can broaden their appeal by having good BPO partners."

Anthony O'Donnell has covered technology in the insurance industry since 2000, when he joined the editorial staff of Insurance & Technology. As an editor and reporter for I&T and the InformationWeek Financial Services of TechWeb he has written on all areas of information ... View Full Bio